Frank Zappa's musical language

A study of the music of Frank Zappa

GUITAR: SOLO TYPES

In 1987 Zappa released a second guitar solo collection, named "Guitar".
It differs a bit in climate compared to the first "Shut up 'n play yer guitar" box of 1981.
This 1981 collection shows more unity. The majority of the solos were recorded during a shorter time-span (1979-1980), the sound
of the guitar in the various solos is more alike and the Lydian mode with a I and II
chord alternation is often used.
Then in "Guitar" there's more variety. The pedal note and vamp solos prevail. This is part of the reason why
"Guitar" is a more demanding guitar album to listen to. With the chord alternations, when you drop out following what the guitar wants, you at least have the certainty
that you can follow the chord change every one or two bars. It's sort of a comfortable basis. The other part is that Zappa in his search
for rhythmic and melodic variation here repeatedly turns to sections that are less fluid, sometimes
to the extent of being aggressive (I noted that some Zappa fans don't appreciate the album, finding it too much
and all "sounding alike"; personally it took me a while to get accustomed to the CD, but after I did
I enjoy it a lot). The C Lydian chord alternation here returns once in a 1979 solo, called "System of edges", as a reminiscence of "Shut up 'n play yer guitar".

In this section we'll look some more at the different accompanying types Zappa is using in his solos. They can be divided into
four categories. The subject already has
come by in the previous sections. The following is a summary of the guitar solo bars in this study, subdivided this way,
with some new examples from "Guitar". The Shut up 'n play yer guitar sections contains tables of all solos with their scales and types.
The latter table is a consequence of my discussion with B. Clement about Zappa's use of scales. So some redundance between
these two sections of my study grew out of this, but I prefer not to re-shuffle the content of my study through time.

1.1 Sexual harassment in the workplace

1) Solos over a chord progression or being a chord progression.

This is the most common way of doing a solo in rock music. Mostly there's an instrumental in a song where
the accompaniment keeps following the main chord progression and someone is doing a solo over it.
Because you already know the chords the solo sounds as a logical in-between without surprises. In other
instances the soloist is filling in the chords of the accompaniment that are agreed upon in advance.
Zappa rarely does solos this way. The solo from "Dirty love" from "Overnite sensation" is a clear example
of him playing in this manner.
The most exceptional ones are the "Zoot allures" and the "Five-five-FIVE" solo openings,
that are chord progressions
by themselves. Another one is the title track from "Sleep dirt" where the accompaniment is doing broken chords.
It ends with joking about the repetitiveness of these broken chords: "Damn! What? Your fingers got stuck?".
Solos of this kind in this study are:

- "Lost in a whirlpool" opening: playing over the blues scheme in 1958.
- "Walking out" section.
- "Call any vegetable" solo section from a 1971 bootleg. Here the keyboard
is basically doing a vamp, the same one as on the original version on "Absolutely free", but in the
transcribed bars it's making a movement.
- "Another whole melodic section" section.
- "Fifty-fifty" section. A solo following a modulation scheme.
- "Phyniox". A solo following a modulation scheme, combined with the use of vamps.
- "Zoot allures" main theme, as mentioned.
- "Sleep dirt" opening, idem.
- "Bowling on Charen" third example.
- "Five-five-FIVE" opening, idem.
- "Stevie's spanking" opening.
- "For Giuseppe Franco" section. A pedal note solo with a section with a chord progression in it, that is transcribed
in this study.
- "Sexual harassment in the garage" intro.

Zappa kept playing the blues throughout his career. "Suicide chump" and "In France" are two of his
eighties blues pieces. "Guitar" opens friendly with Zappa playing over the blues
scheme in "Sexual harassment in the garage". Blues is a highly standardized style, there's little more possible
than to play around the scheme (see also the Bongo fury section). Here Zappa is adding in extra chords in C sharp minor.
The I
of the blues I-IV-I-IV-V progression is augmented as I 7th followed by V and the IV becomes IV 7th
plus I. Then of course there is the solo itself.

1.2-3 Which one is it? - Republicans

2) Solos over pedal notes.

With the second solo on "Guitar", "Which one is it?", we get to one of the many solos where Zappa is playing over a pedal note.
With the leaving of the familiar blues scheme the tension immediately rises. "Which one is it?" is in G Dorian. The
next solo, "Republicans", is in 4/4 with a steady beat all through. This piece has a shifting pedal note and the soloing
moves on chromatically. It doesn't use a diatonic scale, but you can't call it atonal neither. In the transcribed section
Zappa mostly follows
E-F#-G-A-Bb-C#-D#. The pedal notes start with E at 0:00, subsequently B Flat at 2:19, D sharp at 3:17 and then
back to E at 4:29.

The handling of the pedal notes in Zappa's solos can take various directions.
In "Ship ahoy" the pedal note is buzzing in the background. In "Republicans" it's a pedestrian beat. In most solos the bass
is playing around the pedal note, as in the transcribed section from "GOA" below.

Sections from the following titles are present in this study as examples of pedal note solos:

1.4-5 Do not pass go - Chalk pie

Two more examples of pedal note solos. "Do not pass go" is in B Dorian and "Chalk pie" in A Mixolydian.
"Chalk pie" is also the title of a live double album from his 1982 tour, that Zappa once considered
releasing. See the Cosmic Debris book by Greg Russo, the 2002 "son of revised" edition, page 268.
"Chalk pie" would have been the title track. All songs have subsequently
been released elsewhere, spread out over a number of CDs. To the right Zappa's band in 1982 (photo
downloaded from the Steve Vai site).

1.6-7 In-a-gadda-Stravinsky - That's not really reggae

From the perspective of mingling related scales (see below), "In-a-gadda-Stravinsky" is an interesting solo because it's
using a number of scales simultaneously. It's a bizarre solo. First the rhythm. The bass plays a figure in 4/4 for the first half of this solo. It's on beat during
beats 1-2 and continues syncopically during beats 3-4. The strange thing about it is the behaviour of the two rhythm guitars: they ignore the 4/4 meter
by the bass and drum and follow their own tempo. It causes some notational difficulties. In the first example the beats of rhythm guitar #1 happen to coincide
with a 9-tuplet for bars 1-2, but at the transition from
bar 6 to 7 it starts to shift. Rhythm guitar #2 coincides with the pattern of staff 3 - an eight note followed by a pause of a half note - but that
also only lasts neatly for the example here. During the second example rhythm guitar #1 has left and the tempo is a bit slower. But rhythm guitar #2 is
still present, following the same tempo from the first example.

For the first half the bass guitar plays a vamp in D Dorian (all notes natural), while rhythm guitar #2 implies D Lydian (with an F#, C# and G#). Zappa can use either
of these scales or get between them via D Mixolydian (F#, others natural) or D major (F# and C#, others natural). At several points his soloing becomes
chromatic. During bars 1 till 7 (beats 1-2) Zappa follows D major. At beat 3 of bar 7 the F# gets altered to F natural and Zappa continues in D Dorian for a while
on the CD. For the second half of the solo the bass vamp disappears to make place for, basically, D pedal. At the point of the second example Zappa
is playing in D Mixolydian. For bars 7-8 the bass plays an A pedal and it looks like Zappa might want to continue in A, but at the end of bar 8 things
are getting chromatic. This continues more explicitly in bars 9-10. "That's not really reggae" is a pedal note solo in A Dorian.

1.8-9 When no one was no one - Once again, without the net

These titles are yet two more examples of pedal note solos. "When no one was no one" is in A Mixolydian.
The accompaniment of "Once again, without the net" is relatively simple: a D pedal by the bass with a pulsing chord
around the notes from the Dsus2 chord. This chord, played by keyboards and rhythm guitars, isn't constant. The volume
fluctuates and you've got notes coming up and fading out. The transcription is only by approximation regarding this aspect.
The B and E can be part of the chord too at several instances. It's the combined harmonies of the solo and the accompaniment
that are responsible for the intensity of this solo:
- The solo guitar frequently plays the F# and G#, so all diatonic harmonic combinations can be heard.
- The solo guitar follows the D Lydian scale, while the accompaniment uses the D Mixolydian scale. This creates
a presence of conspicuous chromatic notes within the sound of the whole. It's almost like the bass and the guitar are competing about the G
being natural or sharp, both in the example below (bars 1-6) and several other sections from the solo.
- The guitar part by itself is frequently applying altered notes too, like a C natural during 0:58-1:04,
a D# at 1:14 and an A# at 1:33.

While Zappa liked to boast about his achievements, he opens "Guitar" with an understatement: "These solos were
recorded live between 1979 and 1984. None of them are perfect, but I hope you can enjoy them anyway."
"Shut up 'n play yer guitar" centered aroud the 1979-1980 tours. This collection around the 1982 and 1984 tours
(touring in 1983 was skipped). The 32 included solos stem are subdivided over the touring years as:
- 1979: 2.
- 1981: 5.
- 1982: 11.
- 1984: 14.
The later "Trance-fusion" collection would focus on the 1988 tour. Zappa's various other live albums and quite some ZFT recordings
cover the other years reasonably well too. Recording conditions could be less in earlier years. Still one might wonder about the possibilities
the tape archive could offer.

1.10-11 Outside now (original solo) - Jim and Tammy's upper room

"Jim and Tammy's upper room" is a pedal note solo in G Dorian. "Outside now" has a characteristic vamp, which is why Zappa didn't re-title the four versions, that are available in his catalogue:
- The first release can be found on "Joe's garage". The intro with lyrics is a studio recording. The solo probably a live
recording, that was superimposed upon a studio accompaniment via xenochrony (see the One sot deal section from this study
for an example, where it can be proved how xenochrony was applied).
- "Outside now again" from "The perfect stranger" is a synclavier execution.
It suggests an improvisation, but has been written out entirely. Some bars are present in this study. The piece has been
performed by human ensembles as well, like the Asko ensemble.
- "Guitar" offers an entirely live recording from 1979, that Zappa calls the "original solo".
- Another live recording from the 1988 tour can be found on "Broadway, the hard way". On this occasion a brass section
was added to the instrumentation. The main theme from this version of "Outside now" is
included in the Joe's garage section of this study.

1.12 Were we ever really save in San Antonio?

In music literature scales often get associated with moods. The major scale is explained as bright or merry, the minor scale as dark or sad.
In the Clement study (see the left menu) you can find a table with the modal scales listed in this way. From brightest to darkest, the sequence is:
Lydian-Ionian-Mixolydian-Dorian-Aeolian-Phrygian-Locrian (page 317). Some attempts are made to interpret Zappa's music in this manner:
Page 141: "Hence, Lydian is judged the
brightest of all the modes and, of the five modes of the Lydian system, [...].
Of his four most often employed modes (Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian) only one
is a “minor” mode, and that mode, Dorian, is the “brightest” of the minor modes.
The general brightness of Zappa’s modal choices highlights the lack of “tragedy”
expressed by his music."
Pages 134-5: "That is, Lydian and Dorian are, in a sense, polar opposites within the modal system. One
manifestation of this binary relationship can be seen by hearkening back to our discussion of the
Lydian mode, particularly the concert-opening guitar-solo vamp used by Zappa circa 1978-79: a
sustained E pedal that was customarily accompanied by an E-Lydian solo. On Halloween night 1978, Zappa modified the
opening solo by substituting an A pedal for the standard pedal on E
and accompanying this A pedal with a Dorian improvisation. Given the occasion of
Halloween, therefore, the characteristic minor tonality of Dorian was deemed a more appropriate
concert introduction than the typical major tonality of Lydian."

As it comes to emotions in music you're getting at an area where you can't prove things.
Ultimately only your own experience counts. There are common denominators however. When you're playing these scales up and down
or when you're playing standard progressions in these scales as I-IV-V-I, most people will indeed experience major as joyful and minor as lamenting.
This whole thing gets different as soon as you're getting at a composer as Zappa, using any chord in any position. In that case the above
evaporates into a bigger universe. Just play a number of sus2- and and sus4-chords in these keys instead of triads and sevenths. According to Clement Lydian is Zappa's mostly used scale in his
instrumental music and according to my findings Dorian. Just that would lead to a different conclusion regarding the moods according the mentioned table/sequence from above.
In my opinion however, something else is going on: this table mostly doesn't apply at all in case of Zappa.
- In case of "Joe's garage", acts II and III, Zappa is both in his lyrics and music looking for tragedy in a classical sense. You've got Joe being deprived
of his music, being able to play guitar solos only in his head. "Outside now" is in Bb Lydian and "Watermelon in Easter hay" is in E major.
So Zappa is using major type of scales for his best known wailing solos. This doesn't mean that there's also "tragic" music by Zappa in minor type of scales.
It does mean that Zappa could resort to any kind of scale for doing so.
- You can check the many examples in this study yourself to find if there is a relationship between moods and scales. "Were we ever really save in San Antonio?"
from above is in B Dorian, "St. Etienne" from "Jazz from hell" is another one in B Dorian. Such solos don't sound "dark" to me.
As said, the main reason why the moods-table doesn't fit well, is Zappa's attitude towards harmony. In bar 1 of the example from above, Zappa
is playing along II 7th, the keyboard part improvises along I 7th and III 9th. The bass is giving a B pedal and you've got a second guitar maintaining an E.
All combined you've got the whole B Dorian scale sounding as a 13th chord. When you continue with looking at how Zappa's guitar notes can be grouped into
chords, you'll find he just does anything that pleases him. I find Zappa's solos very expressive and CDs as "Guitar" offer an ongoing stream of two hours
of quality music. It's not just Zappa doing this, other composers can get at a more abstract emotional level as well:
- C. Debussy remained a diatonic composer (apart from a few whole-tone compositions), widening his use of chords from triads and sevenths to any combination
within a scale. The effect of his non-standard progressions is both that they sound very refreshing till today and that it's difficult to describe
the emotions they evoke with regular vocabulary.
- A. Schoenberg willingly sought for complete atonality, leaving behind all standard patterns regarding emotional expression in music. You're getting
in a different world, abstract, but expressive just the same when you're able to handle it well (as Schoenberg did).

1.13-14 That ol' G-minor thing again - Hotel Atlanta incidentals

With the title of track 13, Zappa is referring to the "Variations on the Carlos Santana secret chord progression" solo
from "Shut up 'n play yer guitar". Here he is re-using the vamp from this piece, a clear reference to the type
of accompaniment Carlos Santana frequently used. This vamp can be found in The FZ Guitar Book, page 108.

It's a vamp of two bars in 4/4, alternating the Gm7 and C chords. It gets it specific character by its rhythm (both off beat and on beat)
and the inclusion of Bm (no third) add E as a passing chord.
"Minor" in this context stands for minor type. More specifically, the key is G Dorian.
"Hotel Atlanta incidentals" is yet again another pedal note solo, this time in E Dorian.

1.15-16 That's not really a shuffle - Move it or park it

"Move it or park it" is one of two solos on "Guitar", where the accompaniment goes similar to the
"Them or us" solo
from the CD with the same title. See the corresponding section for an outtake of that particular solo. All three solos are in Bb Lydian.

"That's not really a shuffle" is neither normally diatonic, nor atonal. The overall sound tends towards Eb Dorian, which is why
I notated this piece as if in Eb Dorian. More precisely, what you are hearing is:
- The guitar and keyboard accompaniment is using the progression Eb-Fm-Gb-Fm. With the Eb chord, this figure starts implying Eb Mixolydian,
but continues as if in Eb Dorian.
- Zappa is applying many chromatic notes during his solo, but mostly is following the Eb Dorian scale.
- The bass follows the largely descending line E-C-A-E, thus with the E and A being natural instead of sharp. There's a distance
of one or two octaves between the bass and the other parts, so the created dissonance remains mild. There aren't enough bass notes
to say this part is positively in a certain scale, but you could call this a form of bitonality with the bass playing notes from E Dorian.
So the whole stays indeterminate. There's no musical term covering this accurately.

1.17 Sunrise redeemer

"Sunrise redeemer" at the end of disc one is one of the solos on this album that are using a vamp, nicely varied
upon by Scott Tunes. Halfway the vamp switches to being played an octave lower than in the following opening bars.

It's an
E Mixolydian vamp of two bars. This vamp is characterised by alternating moving downwards from B to E and from E to E.
Again you've got a steady chord for the rhythm guitar. Now it's a major third on D, played before beat.

2.1 Variations on Sinister #3

Zappa's solos are mostly outtakes from songs, where these sections are played as instrumental interludes. The fact that this is known is largely
by circumstantial evidence. The many bootlegs contain these pieces in their entirety. The solos themselves seldom relate to the material
from the song that they were part of. Neither the accompaniment, nor Zappa is referring to themes or progressions from a song. No solo
from "Guitar" can be attributed to a song when you're only listening to the solo itself. When
taken separately, they become individual compositions in every meaning of the word. In fact, as it comes to what song they can be part of, they
can be interpreted as interchangeable. Only the tempo and the key have to be in line with the song. More importantly, as it comes to the improvising, Zappa
started anew each time. When you're looking at the opening bars from "Yo' mama" and "Mo' mama" (both present in this study), you can see that this concerns
different compositions. So quite correctly Zappa's solos carry individual titles, instead of calling a solo "Solo from Inca roads #3" or something
like that. Their quality is such that releasing three guitar solo collections
is justified.
Sometimes however, there is a relationship with other solos:
- A solo includes a returning melodic section, that you can call pre-arranged or "written". This is the case in for instance "Black napkins",
"Zoot allures" and "Watermelon in Easter hay". This is also the case in "Variations on Sinister #3", where you can indeed recognize variations
upon thematic material from the "Sinister footwear III" solo,
as released earlier on "You are what you is".
- A solo has a characteristic vamp. This is the case in for instance "Outside now".
In both of such instances, Zappa is consistent in not giving these solos new titles.
To the right Zappa playing guitar during his
1984 tour (photo downloaded, photographer didn't get mentioned).

2.2-3 Orrin hatch on skis - But who was Fulcanelli?

"But who was Fulcanelli?" is a pedal note solo in E Lydian. "Orrin hatch on skis" is another solo using a vamp. This one has a reggae beat and a bass figure with a syncope in it during the second beat.

Regarding scales
it's an example where Zappa is alternating or mingling two closely related scales while using the same keynote, two scales that only differ by one note. C major and
C Lydian are for instance very close: you only have to vary between F and F#. For modulating from C major to minor (Aeolian) you would have to change three notes.
There are other diatonic scale combinations, that behave the same like minor-Dorian, major-Mixolydian and Dorian-Mixolydian. It's a subtle manner of modulating, that
Zappa sometimes applied both for his solos and written compositions. As already mentioned Zappa normally doesn't use drastic key changes in his solos. He preferred
to stay in one key. When the key does change he could effect it by changing the pedal note (leaving the set of notes the same) or changing a note as in the list below.
Solos that are using unrelated scales are rare. Examples mentioned in this study are the "Black napkins" ending and the solo from the Hammersmith Odeon version
of "King Kong".

In "Orrin hatch on skis" D Mixolydian tends to have the upper hand. The keyboard and rhythm guitar are in D Mixolydian all through. The bass starts chromatically
(bars 1-3) and then continues in D Dorian. The guitar opens with an accentuated F in bar 1, bar 2 has an F# and bar three an F natural again. Next the guitar continues
in G Mixolydian with only one more time the Dorian F on beat three from bar 6.

2.4-5 For Duane - GOA

"For Duane" and "GOA" are both pedal note solos. The first in A Dorian, the second in D Mixolydian.
The "GOA" guitar solo part itself is at various points chromatic.

"Republicans" (above), "Canadian customs" (below) and "GOA"
have as a common characteristic that they are accompanied by a steady chord by the rhythm guitar. Sequently
they are D#, Em-5 and Asus4. Their rhythms vary. On "Republicans" it becomes a reggae beat, on "Canadian customs" it's
an ongoing stream of 8th notes. In "GOA" it gets more complicated. Whereas the bass and drum are playing in regular 4/4,
the rhythm guitar plays a constant figure in an odd rhythm. By itself it gets counted
as "One-two-three-four-and" with the "and" standing for the addition of a 16th note to the four eighth notes.

2.6-7 Winos do not march - Swans? What swans?

3) Solos over two alternating chords.

"Winos do not march" is in F Lydian, using two alternating chords. "Swans? What swans?" is another solo Lydian, this time Bb Lydian over a Bb pedal note.

As mentioned above, there are few examples of solos over two alternating chords on "Guitar". "Winos do not march" and "System of edges" are in fact the only two.
But you can check the dozen of examples from other CDs in this study:

2.8-9 Too ugly for show business - System of edges

As already mentioned, "System of edges", is the second solo from "Guitar" with a chord alternation.
"Too ugly for show business" begins as a solo with a little vamp by the bass player, but once Zappa starts
soloing, this vamp flattens and evolves more like a pedal note, being played around a bit. The example below contains
bars 9-12 from this piece with the start of the guitar part. It's in D Mixolydian. Because the band has already been playing for eight
bars, the pattern is known by everybody. For this reason it can happen that everybody is avoiding the downbeat
at the beginning of bar 10. This also involves the drummer (not included in the transcription).

In Guitar Player, October 1995, Zappa commented:
- GP: "There are three or four bars at the very beginning [of Heavy duty Judy] before you hear a downbeat."
- FZ: "Right. And if you're oriented to 4/4 music, that's going to disturb you. But music doesn't
always have to land on the downbeat of every bar. It's just totally unnecessary - there's no gold-plated rule
anyplace in the universe saying that must occur. You can tap your foot to it and hear the harmonic rhythm -
the harmonic line that keeps coming back - but the rhythmic line doesn't have to match it. There is such a thing
as a hemiola, where you play across the bar. And you've got hemiolas to death, for days, in those three
[Shut up 'n play yer guitar] albums."

2.10-11 Do not try this at home - Things that look like meat

4) Solos that are using a vamp.

"Do not try this at home" is the second solo on "Guitar" with the "Them or us" flavour to it.
"Things that look like meat" has a vamp in G Dorian.

This vamp is a bass figure of two bars, appearing in a couple of rhythmical shapes. During the first bar the G gets followed by a C, towards the end in the manner
of bars 1 and 3 from the example from above. The second bar in this example moves more freely from E to G, with the transition from
bar one to two often being syncopic. "Things that look like meat" is a solo having a composed coda, uncommon in Zappa's
output. So I've transcribed the end in this case, 6:24 through 6:46, after which the CD continues with audience applauding till 6:57. In the example the coda comprises bars 5-13. It remains in G Dorian till the very end, when a chromatic line
ends with evading to an F7 chord. On top of Eb it implies a modulation to Eb Lydian, but it simply ends with this chord as such.
Zappa liked to end songs with deceptive cadences like that during the eighties. See also the my comment upon "Outrage at Valdez"
in the documentaries section. During the coda the shape of the vamp is returning to the form it had at the beginning of the solo.

2.12 Watermelon in Easter hay

"Watermelon in Easter hay" is probably Zappa's most famous solo, using a vamp. It's available in three versions:
- "Joe's garage": this version of "Watermelon in Easter hay"
has been transcribed in full in The FZ Guitar book. The coda is included in the Joe's garage section.
- "Guitar": the theme of this execution from the 1984 tour is included in the Joe's garage section as well. It goes
a little different from the first release on "Joe's garage".
- "Hammersmith Odeon": this ZFT release contains a much different version, presented as
"Watermelon in Easter hay (prequel)". A section from
this "prequel" is presented in the Sheik Yerbouti section from this study.

2.13-14 Canadian customs - Is that all there is?

"Canadian customs" starts off as a pedal note solo upon F sharp, but after a minute the
bass player has worked towards a riff, that will keep vamping for the remainder of the solo.

"
Canadian customs" is
chromatic in a way comparable to "Republicans". There are no diatonic scales used, but both the bass and the solo guitar
tend to use sets of notes over longer periods.
See above also above at "GOA" for steady accompanying chords. "Is that all there is?" is a pedal note solo in C Lydian.

2.15 It ain't necessarily the Saint James infirmary

"Guitar" ends with a cover, with Zappa beginning a solo with citing music from two American classic songs, one written by
George and Ira Gershwin, the other by Jim Pimrose. The vamp,
that's being used here, is also present in what
I'm calling block V of the 1982 "King Kong" execution, that you can hear on "YCDTOSA Vol. III".
See the corresponding section from this study for a short description and some transcribed bars. At this point it's
not a cover, but directly attributable to Zappa.